The Boycott of the Bulygin Duma, and Insurrection

Published:Proletary, No. 12, August 16 (3), 1905.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 9,

      pages179-187.Translated:The Late Abraham Fineberg and Julius KatzerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Atpresent the political situation in Russia is as follows:
the Bulygin Duma may soon be convened—a consultative assembly of
representatives of the landlords and the big bourgeoisie, elected under the
supervision and with the assistance of the autocratic government’s servants on
the basis of an electoral system so indirect, so blatantly based on property and
social-estate qualifications, that it is sheer mockery of the idea of popular
representation. What should our attitude towards this Duma be? The liberal
democrats give two replies to this question. The Left wing, represented by the
“Union of Unions”—mostly representatives of the bourgeois
intelligentsia—is in favour of boycotting this Duma, of abstaining from
participation in the elections, and of taking advantage of the opportunity for
increased agitation for a democratic constitution on the basis of universal
suffrage. The Right wing, as represented by the Zemstvo and Municipal Congress
of July, or, to be more correct, by a certain section of that Congress, is
opposed to a boycott and favours participation in the elections and getting as
many of its candidates as possible elected to the Duma. True, the Congress has
not yet passed any resolution on this question and has postponed the matter
until the next Congress which is to be convened by telegraph following
promulgation of the Bulygin “constitution”. However, the opinion of
liberal democracy’s Right wing has already taken shape.

Revolutionarydemocracy, i.e., in the main, the proletariat, and
Social-Democracy, the vehicle of its conscious expression, is, by and large,
fully in favour of insurrection.This difference in tactics has been correctly appraised byOsvobozhdeniye, organ of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie. Its
    latest issue (No. 74), on the one hand roundly condemns “open advocacy
    of insurrection” as “insane and criminal”; on the other
    hand it criticises the idea of a boycott as “fruitless for practical
    purposes” and expresses the conviction that not only the Zemstvo
    section of the Constitutional-“Democratic” (read: Monarchist)
    Party but the Union of Unions, too, will “pass their state
    examination”, i.e., abandon the idea of a boycott.

Thequestion arises: what attitude should the party of the class-conscious
proletariat take towards the idea of a boycott, and what tactical slogan should
it bring into the foreground for the masses of the people? For a reply to this
question we must first of all call to mind the essence and radical significance
of the Bulygin “constitution”. It is, in fact, tsarism’s deal with
the landlords and big bourgeoisie, who, in return for innocent,
pseudo-constitutional
sops that are quite innocuous to the autocracy, are to be gradually
drawn away from the revolutions i.e., from the fighting people, and reconciled
with the autocracy. The possibility of such a deal cannot be doubted, since all
our Constitutional-“Democratic” Party is eager to preserve the monarchy
and the upper chamber (i.e., in advance to secure for the moneyed “upper
ten thousand” political privileges and political domination in the
country’s system of state). Moreover, such a deal is sooner or later inevitable
in one form or another, at least with a section of the bourgeoisie, for it is
prescribed by the very class position of the bourgeoisie in the capitalist
system. The only question is when and how this deal will take place. The task
confronting the party of the proletariat is to delay conclusion of this deal for
as long as possible, to split up the bourgeoisie as much as possible, to derive
from the bourgeoisie’s temporary appeals to the people the greatest possible
advantage for the revolution, and meanwhile to prepare the forces of the
revolutionary people (the proletariat and the peasantry) for the forcible
overthrow of the autocracy and for the alienation, the neutralisation of the
treacherous bourgeoisie.

Infact, the gist of the bourgeoisie’s political position is, as we have
frequently pointed out, that it stands betweenthe tsar and the people, and would play the part of the “honest
broker” and steal into power behind the back of the militant people. That
is why the bourgeoisie appeals to the tsar one day, and to the people the next,
making “serious” and “business-like” proposals for a
political deal to the former, and addressing empty phrases about liberty
(Mr. I. Petrunkevich’s speeches at the July Congress) to the latter. It is to
our advantage that the bourgeoisie should appeal to the people, for by doing so
it provides material that will help to rouse and enlighten politically those
huge backward masses of people to reach whom through Social- Democratic
agitation would be sheer utopianism for the time being Let the bourgeoisie stir
up those that are most backward; let it break the soil here and there; we shall
untiringly sow the seeds of Social-Democracy in that soil. Everywhere in the
West, in its struggle against autocracy the bourgeoisie was compelled to rouse
the people’s political consciousness, while at the same time striving to sow the
seeds of bourgeois theories among the working class. It is for us to take
advantage of the bourgeoisie’s work of destroying the autocracy and
systematically enlighten the working class concerning its socialist aims and the
irreconcilable antagonism between its interests and those of the bourgeoisie.

Henceit is clear that our tactics at present should first of all consist in
support for the idea of a boycott. The very question of a boycott lies within
the bounds of bourgeois democracy. The working class is not directly interested
in it, but it is definitely interested in supporting that section of bourgeois
democracy which is more revolutionary; it is interested in extending and
intensifying political agitation. A boycott of the Duma means a more vigorous
appeal to the people by the bourgeoisie, a development of its agitation, a
greater number of opportunities for our agitation, and a more intense political
crisis, which is the source of the revolutionary movement. The participation of
the liberal bourgeoisie in the Duma means a slackening in its agitation at the
present time, its appealing more to the tsar than to the people, and the
approach of a counter-revolutionary deal between the tsar and the bourgeoisie.

Evenif it is not prevented from meeting, the Bulygin Duma must of necessity
give rise to political conflicts thatthe proletariat should not fail to take advantage of—but that is a matter
      for the future. It would be ridiculous to renounce utilising this
      bourgeois-bureaucratic Duma for purposes of agitation and struggle, but
      at the moment that is not the point. At present the Left wing of bourgeois
      democracy itself has raised the issue of waging a direct and immediate
      struggle against the Duma by means of a boycott, and we must exert all our
      efforts to support this more deter mined onslaught. We must take the
      bourgeois democrats, theOsvobozhdeniyepeople, at their word,
    give the widest publicity to their “Petrunkevich-like” phrases
    about an appeal to the people, expose them to the people, and show that the
    first and least real test of these phrases was the question of whether we
    should boycott the Duma (i.e., turn in protest to the people) or accept the
    Duma (i.e. abstain from protesting, go once more to the tsar, and accept
    this travesty of popular representation).

Secondly,we must exert every effort to make the boycott of real use in
extending and intensifying agitation, so that it shall not be reduced to mere
passive abstention from voting. If we are not mistaken this idea is already
fairly widespread among the comrades working in Russia, who express it in the
words: anactiveboycott. As distinct from passive abstention, an
active boycott should imply in creasing agitation tenfold, organising meetings
everywhere, taking advantage of election meetings, even if we have to force our
way into them, holding demonstrations, political strikes, and so on and so
forth. It goes without saying that to further agitation and struggle in this
connection, temporary agreements with various groups of revolutionary
bourgeois democrats, generally permitted by a number of our Party resolutions, are
especially expedient. But here we must, on the one hand, steadfastly preserve
the class individuality of the party of the proletariat, and must not for a
single moment abandon our Social-Democratic criticism of our bourgeois allies;
on the other hand, we should be failing in our duty as the party of the advanced
class if in our agitation we failed to produce an advanced revolutionary slogan
at the present stage of the democratic revolution.

Thatis our third direct and immediate political task. As we have already said,
“an active boycott” means agitation,recruiting, organising revolutionary forces on a larger scale, with redoubled
energy, and bringing redoubled pressure to bear. Such work, however, is
unthinkable without a clear, precise, and immediate slogan. Only an armed
uprising can be that slogan. The government’s convocation of a crudely faked
“popular” representative body provides excellent opportunities for
agitation for a truly popular representative body, for making the broadest
masses of the people understand that at present (after the tsar’s frauds and his
mockery of the people) only a provisional revolutionary government can convene
a truly representative body, and that to establish such a government the victory
of an insurrection and the actual overthrow of tsarist rule are necessary. It
would be hard to imagine a better time for widespread agitation for an uprising
and in order to conduct that agitation full clarity regarding the programme of a
provisional revolutionary government is also necessary. This programme should
consist of thesixpoints which we have indicated previously
(seeProletary, No.7, “The Revolutionary Army and the
Revolutionary

			     Government”[1]):

1) convocation of a popular constituent assembly;

2) arming of the people;

3) political freedom—the immediate repeal of all laws that
contradict it;

4) complete cultural and political freedom for all oppressed and
disfranchised nationalities—the Russian people cannot win
liberty for themselves without fighting for the liberty of the other
nationalities;

5) an eight-hour working day;

6) the establishment of peasant committees for the support and
implementation of all democratic reforms, among them agrarian reforms,
up to and including the confiscation of the landlords’ land.

Tosum up: the most energetic support for the idea of a boycott; exposure of the
Right wing of bourgeois democracy, which rejects the boycott, as traitors;
making the boycott an active one, i.e., building up a most widespread agitation;
advocating an insurrection and calling for the immediate organisation of combat
squads and contingents of a revolutionary army for the overthrow of the
autocracy and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government;
spreading and popularising the fundamental and absolutelyobligatory programme of this provisional revolutionary government, a programme
      which is to serve as the banner of the uprising and as a model for all
      future repetitions of the Odessa events.

Suchshould be the tactics of the party of the class- conscious proletariat. In
order to make this tactics perfectly clear and to achieve unity we must also
deal withIskra’stactics. It is set forth in No. 106 of that paper in
an article entitled “Defence or Attack”. We shall not take up the
minor and partial differences, which will dissolve at the first attempts to take
action; we shall deal only with the fundamental difference. While quite
correctly condemning a passive boycott, theIskracontraposes to it the
idea of the immediate “organisation of revolutionary self-government
bodies”, as a “possible prologue to an uprising”. InIskra’sopinion we must “seize the right to carry on agitation in
the election campaign by establishing workers’ agitation
committees”. These committees “must set themselves the aim of
organising popular elections of revolutionary deputies by going outside the
’legal’ limits which will be established by Ministerial Bills”, we must
“cover the country with a network of revolutionary self-government
bodies”.

Sucha slogan is absolutely useless. Viewed in the light of the political tasks
in general it is a jumble, while in the light of the immediate political
situation it brings grist to the mill of theOsvobozhdeniyetrend. The
organisation of revolutionary self-government, the election of their own
deputies by the people is not theprologueto an uprising, but itsepilogue.To attempt to bring about this organisation now, before an
uprising and apart from an uprising, means setting oneself absurd aims and
causing confusion in the minds of the revolutionary proletariat. It is first of
all necessary to win the victory in an uprising (if only in a single city) and
to establish a provisional revolutionary government, so that the latter, as the
organ of the uprising and the recognised leader of the revolutionary people,
should be able to get down to the organisation of revolutionary
self- government. To obscure the slogan of insurrection or relegate it into the
background by proposing a slogan demanding the organisation of a revolutionary
self-government is some thing like giving advice that the fly should first be
caught andthen stuck on the fly-paper. If during the celebrated Odessa events our Odessa
comrades had been advised to organise not a revolutionary army, but the election
of deputies by the people of Odessa as a prologue to an uprising, those comrades
would undoubtedly have laughed such advice to scorn.Iskrais repeating
the mistake made by the Economists, who wished to see in the “struggle
for rights” a prologue to the struggle against the
autocracy.Iskrais reverting to the misadventure of the unfortunate
“plan of the Zemstvo campaign”, which obscured the slogan of
insurrection with the theory of a “higher type of .demonstration”.

Thisis not the place to dwell on the origin ofIskra’stactical
blunder. We shall refer the interested reader to
N. Lenin’s pamphletTwo Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic
Revolution. It is more important here to point out how the slogan of the
newIskralapses into that ofOsvobozhdeniye.In actual
practice attempts to organise popular elections of deputies before the uprising
is victorious would only play into the hands of theOsvobozhdeniyepeople with the result that the Social-Democrats would be trailing behind
them. Until replaced by a provisional revolutionary government the autocracy
will not permit the workers and the people to conduct any elections that can in
any way be called popular (and Social-Democrats will not agree to a travesty of
“popular” elections under the autocracy); but theOsvobozhdeniyeLeague, Zemstvo members and the municipal councillors
will conduct elections and blatantly pass them off as “popular”, and
as an expression of “revolutionary self-government”. The line now
taken by the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie consists in trying to avert an
uprising, compel the autocracy to recognise the Zemstvo elections as popular
elections without the people’s victory over tsarism.and convert the Zemstvo and
municipal self-government bodies into organs of “revolutionary” (in
the Petrunkevich sense) “self-government”, without a real
revolution. An excellent expression of this line is to be found in No. 74 ofOsvobozhdeniye.It would be hard to imagine anything more disgusting
than this ideologist of the cowardly bourgeoisie, who asserts that advocacy of
insurrection “demoralises” both the army and the people! And this
is said ata time when even the blind can see that it is only through an uprising that the
      ordinary Russian citizen and soldier can save himself from utter
      demoralisation and vindicate his right to citizenship! The bourgeois
      Manilov pictures to himself an Arcadian idyll in which the mere pressure
      of “public opinion” alone “will compel the government to
      make concession after concession, until finally it can go no further and
      will have to hand over the power to a constituent assembly elected on the
      basis of universal and equal suffrage, direct elections, and a secret
      ballot, as is demanded by society ..." (! with an upper
      chamber?). “There is nothing at all improbable in this peaceful [!!
      I transition of power from the present government to a national
      constituent assembly, which will organise state and governmental power on
      a new basis.” And this masterly philosophy of the cringing bourgeoisie is
      rounded off with the advice that the army, particularly the officers,
      should be won over; that a people’s militia be established “without
      official authorisation”, and that local self-government bodies
      (read: of land lords and capitalists) should be set up as “elements
      of a future provisional government”.

Thereis method inthismuddle. What the bourgeoisie wants is to be
given power “peacefully”,without a popular uprising, which
may prove victorious, win a republic and genuine liberty, arm the proletariat,
and rouse millions of peasants. To obscure the slogan of insurrection, to
abandon it and make others follow suit, to advise the immediate establishment,
by way of a “prologue”, of popular self-government (to which only
the Trubetskois, Petrunkeviches, Fyodorovs, and the like will be
admitted)—that is what the bourgeoisie needs in order to betray the
revolution and strike a bargain with the tsar (a monarchy with an upper chamber)againstthe “mob”. Liberal Manilovism, there fore, voices
the innermost thoughts of the money-bags, their most profound interests.

Iskra’sSocial-Democratic Manilovism expressed merely the
thoughtlessness of a section of the Social-Democrats, their departure from the
proletariat’s only revolutionary tactics, viz., ruthless exposure of the
bourgeois-opportunist illusions that peaceful concessions from tsarism are
possible, that popular self-government can be instituted withoutthe autocracy being overthrown, and that election of deputies by the people is
possible as a prologue to an uprising. No, we must clearly and resolutely show
the necessity of an insurrection in the present state of affairs; we must issue
a direct call for an uprising (without, of course, fixing the date beforehand)
and call for the immediate organisation of a revolutionary army. Only the
boldest and most widespread organisation of such an army can be the prologue to
an uprising. Only an uprising can actually guarantee the victory of the
revolution; of course, those who know the local conditions will always caution
against attempts at a premature uprising. The real organisation of real people’s
self-government can take place only as the epilogue of a victorious uprising.

[1]See present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 565-66.—Ed.